The President speaks - at Noon or Midnight?

Like many of you,  I received an e-mail with an invitation from the D&AD President to join with his asking a question in as many different languages as possible, as follows:

Dear Creative Person. I have a question for you.
In fact, I have a question for every single purveyor of original thought in the world. On 03.11.10 at 12.00pm GMT I will attempt to ask this question in as many languages as humanly possible.
Join me and please accept my invitation at the bottom of this email.
The President of D&AD

THE PRESIDENT SPEAKS TO THE WORLD IN AS MANY LANGUAGES AS POSSIBLE

Location: youtube.com/dandad 
Date: Wednesday 3 November 2010
Time: 12:00PM GMT


Now, I thought this was quite interesting but I also wondered whether it should be 12:00PM or not?  To me it just looked wrong. So I thought I'd have a quick look into it and it seems that there is no definite answer. Because the abbreviations a.m. stands for ante-meridiem (before the Sun has crossed the line) and p.m. for post-meridiem (after the Sun has crossed the line) it causes a problem because at 12 noon, the Sun is at its highest point in the sky and directly over the meridian. It is therefore neither 'ante-' nor 'post-' and it does cause some uncertainty!

Concensus on the web is that to avoid confusion, the correct designation for 12 o'clock is 12 noon or 12 midnight.

Now you know that, get on to YouTube (...at 12 noon) and find out what the message is!
www.youtube.com/dandad 

Posted by Justin Hobson 03.11.2010

Jobs from the past - Number 14

Followers of this blog will know that my first post of every month is a "job from the past" so that I can show some of the really good work from years gone by and this one is from 2006.

Pencalenick House Brochure

Designed by Thirst in London, this is a beautifully produced brochure for an exquisite building. Thirst did the identity and this brochure for this architect designed house which is available for holiday rental. Architect, Seth Stein designed the house and it was constructed using local materials (it won the RIBA South West Award in 2009). This is a very high specification property and the rental price is comensurate with this standard! The brochure does a superb job at showing the property in an understated way which conveys the quality of the architecture and materials used.

Size of the job is 240x170mm, portrait, saddle stitched. The cover is a 6pp with the flap at the front and page 1 of the text has a 'throw out'. Therefore the spread above is the first spread seen which when opens then forms an 8pp double page spread, revealing the image as below... 

The 6pp cover is on Omnia 200gsm and the 26pp (because of the throw out) text is on Omnia 150gsm. The tactile uncoated material works well with the images of the natural materials used in it's construction whilst still doing justice to the fantastic photography.

Print production is by Nigel Powell at Turnstone Print Solutions.

http://www.pencalenickhouse.com/

http://www.thirst-london.com/

turnstoneprint@blueyonder.co.uk

http://www.sethstein.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 02.11.2010

University of the Arts 2010

This is one of the most beautifully simple jobs that I have seen all year. It is for the University of the Arts in London and is the book produced for the awards ceremony in July and lists every candidate on every course together with their awards.

Size is 160x230mm, portrait. The job has a 4pp cover with 112pp text with a spine width of about 10mm. One of the most unusual things is that the whole job is printed in just one colour - Pantone Gold (874, I guess). Not only is it unusual to see one colour jobs produced these days in any sort of volume (because the pressure always seems to be on using colour) but using a metallic on an uncoated substrate (Redeem 100% Recycled 240gsm and 130gsm)  is uncommon and yet, as you can see, it works beatifully, both on the text work and the full pages of solid with reversed out extremely fine lines.

Design is by David Preston Studio. It was produced in conjunction with Simon Goode at the Department of Communications and Development at the University of the Arts. Thank you Simon for sending me copies and the lovely note.

It was printed by Tradewinds who are based in Peckam in South London and I have to say, they have made a really lovely job of it.

http://www.arts.ac.uk/

http://www.davidprestonstudio.co.uk/

http://www.tradewindslondon.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 28.10.2010

Whistles S/S 2010

This is the Spring Summer 2010 lookbook for Whistles - (I've only just taken the pics which is why it's s bit late for the current season!)

The size is 240x340mm Portrait, saddle stitched. It has a 4pp cover (which is deliberately lightweight) on our Marazion Ultra 135gsm with a 24pp text on Marazion Ultra 90gsm which gives it a light, summery feel.

The spreads alternate between CMYK in colour and four colour black and white images, sometimes in a portrait format over the DPS. It's a beautifully produced job.

Art Direction and design is by Simmonds Ltd.  Photography is by Karim Sadli and Styling is by Francesca Burns.

http://www.whistles.co.uk/

http://www.simmondsltd.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 26.10.2010

HAPTIC

I've just received printed samples of this superb identity project for architects, Haptic.

Rules have been used to create letterforms (see above) which have then been translated into a fantastic emboss and deboss for the business cards, pictured below.

The effect on the business cards is created using a multi-level die which embosses and debosses in the same pass on the machine. Fantastically simple and amazingly effective - nothing more to be said!

Materials used are Matrisse Cotton 110gsm for the letterhead and Matrisse 320gsm for the business card.

Design is by BOB Design in London. Creative Director is Mireille Burkhardt.

Print and embossing is by Benwells in London.

http://www.hapticarchitects.co.uk/
http://www.bobdesign.co.uk/
http://www.benwell.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 22.10.2010

Nobile Folios

I have just received a copy of this really exquisite piece of literature published by Sylph Editions in association with London art gallery, Piano Nobile.

This new series of publications are Monographic explorations of 20th and 21st Century masters. Each booklet explores one painting and one painting only. This picture by Mark Gertler is called 'Bathers 1917-1918' and is set alongside a story called 'Trees at a Sanatorium' specially written for this publication by Shaun Lewis.

There are several facets to this job which it is impossible to appreciate without actually handling the job. The size of  240x282mm just feels right (can't always explain that one!). It has an 8pp cover and a 32pp text. The material choice is perfect - it is Omnia Natural 200gsm cover and 120gsm text which again just 'feels' right. The material and the image work perfectly together with the subtle tactile nature of the Omnia and the brushwork of the painting. The binding is three hole sewn BUT with two lots - which looks great in the red thread.

The publication comes beautifully packaged in a folio box made using our Rib-Tone 1 sided. Comptletely unprinted (and therefore quite economical) the box is held closed by a locking tab and personalised with a belly band - the whole package looks great.

The project is designed and art directed by Ornan Rotem at Sylph Editions with assistance by Num Stibbe and in this job, even the typeface gets credited! 'set in Hoefler and Frere-Jones's Verlag, an affable Modernist typeface, drawing its inspiration from early 20th century rationalist geometric designs such as Futura'

The superb print and finishing is by Principal Colour in Paddock Wood.

http://www.piano-nobile.com/

http://www.sylpheditions.com/

http://www.principalcolour.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 20.10.2010

ISTD Stammtisch - 13th October 2010

Talking Books was an event held last Wednesday hosted by the ISTD (International Society of Typographic Designers) at The Russian Club Studios in London E8 . It involved a series of short presentations by a variety of speakers talking about a book of their choice. The speakers included Ken Hollings, Fraser Muggeridge, Caroline Roberts, Gary Bird, Lucienne Roberts, Hana Tanimura, Gilmar Wendt and me! 

It was a great evening which was amazingly interesting and diverse both in terms of the people giving the presentations and the books that they spoke about. It was very oversubscibed  and I should guess there were at least 120 in the audience.

This is me doing my talk...

Afterwards everyone got a chance to handle the books that had been spoken about (with cotton gloves on, of course!)

I can't give a complete transcript of the evening as it  would take far too long. The speakers were all excellent (probably with the exception of me!) and in particular Lucienne Roberts who spoke so passionately and coherently about her book on Sister Corita and CSM MA student Hana Tanimura about our book buying and owning culture - she's writing her dissertation on this subject  All in all a really interesting evening.

And I guess you're asking "which book did Justin talk about"? Well, in some ways it isn't a book at all - it could almost be described as a "de-constructed" book, as it has no binding! It's a job for the NatWest Media Centre at Lords Cricket ground produced for Future systems by Cartlidge Levene in 1999. Unfortunately I haven't got time to write about it fully now but it will feature as one of my "Jobs from the Past" posts (which is the first post of every month). But for now, here's one picture of it so you get the idea!

Finally thanks to the ISTD for hosting and arranging the evening. I thing these events are excellent and I think that everyone who's practising in this creative industry should make an effort to get to this sort of event once in a while. Otherwise we all exist in our own little work bubble and often don't get exposed to what else is out there and different ideas and thinking. Special thanks to Belinda Magee and Paulus Dreibholz and all at ISTD. For next event, email to stammtisch@istd.org.uk.

http://www.istd.org.uk/
http://www.helveticcentre.ch/

Posted by Justin Hobson 18.10.2010